Work-Life Toolkit for Managers: Management Tools
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Assessing Employee Needs
To develop a work-life strategy and plan you must first understand the needs of your employees and staff. The work-life needs of your employees are unique and change over time. Employees often feel that there is a stigma associated with expressed needs for work-life solutions. As a manager, you must demonstrate support and create an environment of trust to achieve and strengthen an engaged, high-performing team. A great place to start is simply asking your employees:
- What can I do to support your well-being?
- Do you have the support you need to manage work and personal or family life?
- How satisfied are you with your current schedule?
Some common best practices used to assess your employees’ needs are:
One-on-one meetings - Take advantage of routine one-on-one meetings, such as performance review sessions or during the on-boarding process
Focus Groups - Conduct focus group sessions or listening sessions around work-life topics
Surveys - Leverage existing survey results that may identify work-life
challenges (i.e., OPM's Federal Work-Life
Survey Report, Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey Report, agency climate
surveys, etc.). You may also request an agency level work-life report at worklifesurvey@opm.gov.
Other Useful Tools for Assessments:
Employee Engagement
Unlock
Talent Community of Practice: Here you can find case studies, videos, training, research, best practices and other helpful resources to help create an engaged federal workforce. This community is designed to offer the tools needed to create strategies that lead to an inclusive work environment where a diverse federal workforce is fully engaged and energized to put forth its best effort, achieve its agency’s mission, and remain committed to public service.
Maximizing
Employee Engagement Course: This course provides supervisors, managers and executives with practical guidance and resources to effectively engage their teams. This highly participatory course is designed to help provide learners with education about employee engagement and its relationship to organizational success, financial performance and employee outcomes such as retention and attraction.
Performance Management
Performance
Management Plus - Engaging for Success: Performance Management Plus – Engaging for Success is a web-based training course designed to support Federal employees, HR practitioners, supervisors, managers, and executives in understanding and applying Performance Management Plus (PM+), where the "Plus" is employee engagement. PM+ recognizes that the key to enabling excellence in performance is having genuine and positive working relationships and interactions between supervisors and employees.
Performance Management: Managing in a Virtual Enviornment Part 1 and Performance Management: Managing in a Virtual Enviornment Part 2: Performance Management in a Virtual Environment, is a two part webinar on telework and performance management. The first part of the series will focus on the key steps for developing a successful telework strategy to ensure program success. The second part of the series will demonstrate how effective performance management can lead to organizational success in a virtual environment.